You Found Me
by Whisper.Winds
Summary: My 2nd shot at New Moon Era J/B. Edward is gone, believing the threats of himself, James, and Victoria to have been removed from Bella's life. Unfortunately, a bruise on the ego fades slowly, and Bella is in more peril than ever before. Read & Rate!


**Title:** You Found Me  
**Author:** Tea  
**Chapter: **1 – Hide and Seek  
**Word count:** 1146

**Author's Note:** This is my second attempt at a James/Bella story, and I am hoping this one will be finished, unlike my last attempt that just lost it's way. I appreciate all my loyal readers, who I hope will latch onto this story as they did the last one, and all the new readers, who I hope enjoy this!

**CHAPTER ONE: HIDE AND SEEK**

The dawn was not yet visible through the thick haze of trees that masked my view. I had no idea what time it was, though this was not unusual, now, for me to be out of the loop in regards to time. Over all, what was time, for me? Time was merely the slow ticking of the clock, an endless parade of days and nights that melted into one another with nothing to make them distinct them from each other. Cold days and nights in which He remained absent. At that particular moment, I was repeating something I had repeated endless amounts of times, in hopes to gain some leverage in the situation, somehow. I stood at the mouth of the twisted forest before me, my small white house just moments behind. The forest was a damp, dark hell, but it was still a familiar hell. It was the place where He had spoken the words that left me this way, and the place I was ever so sure He would return, if only I continued to go there often enough. I was absolutely certain it would work, if I put enough effort into my plan. At any rate, I could hear Him, His voice, every once in a while, telling me, "Go back inside. I've told you before not to be here alone."

Of course, I ignored the voice in hopes that He would have to return for a personal intervention rather that whatever cosmic telephone line we were tapping into that allowed me some audible reprieve. I clung fervently to that hope as I navigated the forest, looking without seeing, walking without thinking, and hoping the roots below me that made up the floor would not ensnare me as I did. I was practically daring Him to come and prove that it was true. If there were things out here more dangerous than Him, He had only two logical options – Option One: let them take me, a welcome change, if He did not want me, and Option Two: come and save me from whatever He had been referring to. His options were decidedly limited, though I had almost begun to believe there was a hidden Option Three: leave me to my own devices, based on the fact that He no longer cared.

I didn't expect my luck to hold out long as far as the momentary suspension of my clumsiness went, so when I began to hurdle towards the ground, I was not entirely surprised. The shock factor came in the form of the twisting, vine-like root that came into contact with my mouth, causing blood – salty, coppery, tangy blood – to fill my mouth immediately. Even the pain barely registered through the foggy haze I'd been living in, nothing more than a dull ache. Not particularly deterred or fazed by my tumble, I merely stood up and continued to walk deeper into the heart of the forest. Moments later, I paused to numbly wipe away the flood of blood that had begun to trickle out of my mouth, down the font of my cotton sleep clothes. Funny, wasn't it, that I used to be faint at the sight of something like that? It no longer applied, in some strange twist of things. I could have sworn, however, that I heard a hiss from the dark brush around me. Yet another warning sign that was too weak and feeble to penetrate through the fog of my lack of feeling.

Soon enough, bleeding and battered, I reached the clearing at the center of the forest, and I waited. I waited, and I waited… but nothing ever happened. Not surprising, I realized, as it hadn't the hundred million nights before that I had waited there for Him. It still took me the better part of an hour to give up and return home, a result of my cutting down from the beginning. I used to be capable of waiting hours at a time, from the moment I escaped my home, to the moment the sun began to peek through the canopy of trees overhead. Eventually, I began staying out a shorter amount of time as I adjusted my schedule, based on the level of suspicion Charlie held in regards to my behavior. He had not been quite as keen to watch closely my odd behavior as of late, and it made the nights I decided to spend with His voice in my head much easier to achieve. Knowing I had time to spare that particular night, I sat down in the mud and the wet, my level of noticing quite low. I stared up through the tips of the trees, straining my eyes to see anything beyond their darkness. To my left, without warning, there was a sound. Footsteps.

Immediately, I leapt to my feet, my heart in my throat. "Edward," I cried out, the hole in my chest stretching tight and round, stinging around the edges with the pain of speaking his name out loud and in such a desperate tone. I circled around wildly, my feet slipping several times, though I was able to right myself. "Edward, Edward, Edward…" I kept repeating his name again and again as I turned to all angles of the forest, begging him to be the one the footsteps belonged to, if they were real at all. I had heard them, the thick, wet slosh of footsteps in the surrounding muck. I had heard them more realistically than I had heard his voice, smelled his scent in my room, seen his shadowy white figure on the corners of my peripheral. I had heard the damned footsteps, and I knew it. He was hiding from me, I rationalized, hiding away for some reason. Watching, never coming close enough to be seen. He was teasing me. I could hear more footsteps dancing in the area. "Edward, please…"

He had never been one to take pleasure in something as sadistic as circling me while my tears flowed freely over my cold cheeks, mixing with the blood that pooled at the corner of my mouth. He would never have allowed himself to watch as I bled, doing nothing to help me. Perhaps he might never have even been able to handle the scent in such an immediate area, as we found out at my birthday disaster. I was fighting myself against the irrational conclusion that he was there to be a vicious sadist and watch me buckle under the mental strain I was under, and the rational conclusion that it was not Edward, at all. There was someone out there in the forest – I knew I wasn't crazy when I said this – but there were no guarantees that it was my knight in shining armor, that Edward even remembered my existence.

There was no way to be certain it was not someone else entirely.


End file.
